March 19, 2024

It’s a wrap — almost, until

Summer high school sports wrapped up for me a week ago, but we still have one area high school baseball team playing. Collins-Maxwell/Baxter’s Raiders play in their first-ever state baseball tournament Monday in a Class 2A quarterfinal.

Unlike the CMB softball team, which concluded its first-ever trip to a state softball tournament Thursday, the Raider baseball team is in a single-elimination situation. The Iowa softball tournament plays it out to seventh place, while the Iowa baseball tournament is just about the championship games in its four classifications.

When the CMB Raider boys are done at Principal Park in Des Moines next week, the Newton Daily News sports staff will be through with the 2015-16 high school sports season. It will be just in time to turn our focus to the 2016-17 high school sports season as fall sports practices begin Aug. 8. We’re a month away from fall sports competitions beginning.

Lynnville-Sully’s Sage Ehresman and Colfax-Mingo’s Jacob Lietz have one final football game to play in their high school career. The two area players and Lynnville-Sully head coach Mike Parkinson have been in Cedar Falls this week preparing for the 44th Iowa Shrine Bowl, which is Saturday.

The 2016 Iowa Shrine Bowl will be played at the UNI Dome in Cedar Falls, with exclusive statewide television coverage on Mediacom Channel 22 starting at 4 p.m.

Ehresman and Lietz are on the South team. Parkinson is an assistant coach on South head coach Michael Whisner’s coaching staff. Whisner is the head football coach at Adel-DeSoto-Minburn.

The two players head to college football careers this fall. Ehresman is off to William Penn University in Oskaloosa and Lietz is playing for Grand View University in Des Moines.

The annual Shrine Bowl parade is at 9:30 a.m. Saturday on Main Street in Cedar Falls. Prairie City-Monroe’s Kayla Schakel is on the Shrine Bowl cheer squad.

Tickets for the game are $15 per person. Children under 6 are free.

Proceeds from the Iowa Shrine Bowl support The Shriner’s Hospitals for Children.

Winding up the summer sports is the final race weekend at Iowa Speedway July 29-30. The K&N Pro Series Casey’s General Stores 150 is July 29 and the second NASCAR Xfinity Series stop at Iowa Speedway is July 30 with the U.S. Cellular 250.

Don’t miss the team Hauler Parade from Iowa Speedway through downtown Newton on Thursday. It is at 6 p.m. to kickoff the race weekend. Both races are under the lights at the Newton track to finish out the 2016 racing season at Iowa Speedway.

On the national and international sports scene:

The Kansas City Royals are still up and down this season. The 2015 World Champions did visit the White House Thursday. I got to love this team of guys who seem to have a lot of fun playing baseball. Sure, I want them back in their third straight World Series, but if it doesn’t happen, I’m not down about how the team is performing because the guys are playing hard and making it competitive. You can’t ask for much more than that.

My friend Josh Honeycutt did not make the U.S.A. Olympic track team in triple jump. I’m looking forward to seeing how our athletes fare at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Action starts Aug. 5 and runs through Aug. 21.

“U.S.A. U.S.A.”

So, you see it is a wrap on some things, but we’ll be going right into the fall seasons in a couple of weeks. Right now, all I can say is, “stay frosty out there gang.”

Contact Jocelyn Sheets at

jsheets@newtondailynews.com